#1 Ok, Are You Ready To Cry? About 4500 Years Ago, Ancient Egyptian Parents Put This Homemade Ball In Their Child's Grave As A Toy For The Kid To Play With In The Afterlife
#2 Dummy Head Used By Scientific Educators Around The Turn-Of-The-Century To Demonstrate Static Electricity
Here are the answers to the questions I know you'll all be asking about this:
- Yes, that is real human hair.
- No, I do not know whose hair it is.
- No, to the best of my knowledge the dummy did not ever come to life and seek revenge on the scientists who had given him so many bad hair days.
- Yes, you probably do recognize his face from that recurring nightmare that you have about getting murdered behind a gas station.
- No, I do not know why they did not paint eyelids on him, and yes of course his unblinking stare pierces my soul and fills me with a sense of cold existential dread.
- No, I do not know where you can buy one, you utter lunatic.
#3 Persian Cat Sabotaged Before A Cat Show In Milwaukee, Wisconsin In 1949
Lisa Yaszek, a Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech where she researches and teaches science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures, told Bored Panda: “Objects outside the realm of everyday experience prompt us to start asking questions: Who made this object? When and how did they make it? Why did anyone make something like this? What was (or is!) its purpose? More often than not, an object initially seems strange to us because it’s from a social, political, artistic, or scientific tradition other than the ones to which we are accustomed,” she explained.
#4 A Neon Salesman's Sample Case, Circa 1935
#5 Shoe Doll That Belonged To A Child In The Slums Of London In The Early 20th Century
This doll belonged to an unnamed little girl living in Bethnal Green around 1905. It was acquired by the English folklorist Edward Lovell, who would buy poor children new toys in exchange for their makeshift ones. Although Lovett is perhaps best known today for his collections of folk charms and amulets, he also amassed a huge collection of homemade dolls and games in an attempt to preserve the material culture and history of London's poorest and most vulnerable people.
However noble those intentions, I find the collection of this shoe doll unbearably sad. Rather than exchange it for a new toy, Lovett gave the child and her family a sum of money in exchange for this doll. She selflessly gave up her ONE crude toy to help out her desperately impoverished family.
From The Museum of Childhood, Edinburgh.
#6 Frans Snyders (1579-1657), 'Studies Of A Cat's Head', Oil On Canvas. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
According to the professor, we enjoy solving the puzzle presented by the strange object. “And once we’ve done so, we can indulge in yet another favorite human pastime—telling stories that connect us to these other people,” she said.
“We grieve with ancient parents who buried their children with toys; we empathize with patients searching through medical charts to understand their illnesses; we giggle at—but are also maybe a little bit impressed with—pornographers who ingeniously hide their products in plain sight.”
Lisa concluded that “the objects themselves are made from different materials and with different processes than the ones we use now in our own historical moment, but the motivation for creating and using these objects connects us all, as humans, across time and space.”
#7 Hans Eijkelboom, 'With My Family' (1973)
Another title for this series might as well be "Portrait of women who definitely don't listen to a lot of true crime podcasts."
#8 When The Lid Is Opened On This Victorian Gold Charm, A Little Demon With Sparkling Rhinestone Eyes Pops Out
#9 Boots Worn By Children Who Were Struck By Lightning At St Eata's Church In The Village Of Atcham In Shropshire, England On 13 July 1879
The creator behind The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things is curator and art historian Dr. Chelsea Nichols, who specializes in the strange and dark corners of art history, where monstrous things lurk. According to her official website, Chelsea has a Ph.D from the University of Oxford (2014), where her doctoral thesis examined so-called human curiosities in contemporary art. Moreover, recently she was the Curator of Modern Art at Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand from 2013-2019. Here she worked with some of her favorite projects like an interactive art exhibition called Curious Creatures and Marvellous Monsters and gallery tours with a paranormal investigator.
#10 Terrifying Example Of A Traditional Irish Jack-O'-Lantern Carved From A Turnip, Circa 1850
From the collection of the Museum of Country Life, Ireland.
#11 Screaming Baby Dolls Made From Bisque Porcelain By German Dollmaker Kestner Around 1920
#12 Dr. Wansbrough's Celebrated Nipple Shields, Late 19th C
Chelsea’s “mission in life is to get more people into art, through a very weird-shaped door probably hidden somewhere in a haunted house.” And it seems like she’s definitely successful at it. In fact, Chelsea has gained quite a following on social media with more than 53k followers on her Facebook page and almost 40k on her Instagram.
For anyone who is interested in the odd and peculiar side of our world, The Museum Of Ridiculously Interesting Things is basically a playground. It features the stories behind weird artifacts, unusual objects, and historical events the chances are you've never heard of before. The hidden mothers in Victorian portraits are one such example. Turns out that photographs in the 19th century contained hidden mothers that would keep their children still enough for a non-blurry picture. The mothers would be disguised as chairs or camouflaged under decorative throws behind them, so they were not that obvious from the first glimpse.
#13 A Tiny Devil Vitrified In A Prism Of Glass
I personally recommend selling all your cryptocurrency and investing in demon crystal instead.
From the Kunsthistorisches Museum Collection, Vienna
#14 The 'St Dennistoun Mortuary', A Macabre Coin-Operated Automaton Made Around 1900
The mortuary was made by John Dennison, who ran a business creating ghoulish penny slot machines and creepy mechanical fortune tellers (dream job?) to amuse Blackpool tourists at the end of the 19th century. His other machines included grisly scenes like executions, haunted houses, high-profile crimes, a dying child and drunkard in a graveyard.
#15 A Witch Whistle Or 'Heksenfluit' Made From A Rat's Paw And Carved Bone
I've seen this described on the internet as a flute used to summon witches on the Sabbath. However, according to the museum, this magical flute was actually used to dispel diseased rodents during a rat plague. (Which is possibly even weirder?)
During the mid-19th century, the third wave of bubonic plague swept the world, transmitted by fleas on infected rats. It hit China and India particularly hard and spread to port cities on trading routes with them. Antwerp, however, wasn't too badly bedeviled by the plague. Thanks, rat flute! Definitely all you
#16 Rosamond Purcell's Unsettling Photographs Of Monkey Specimens With Cotton Ball Eyes, From The Collection Of Harvard's Museum Of Comparative Zoology
Sweet dreams.
#17 Here's Something You Didn't Know You Needed In Your Life: Teeny Tiny Pig Porn
These charms contain a hidden Stanhope lens -- a one-piece microscope used for viewing tiny microphotographs as small as the head of a pin. From the late 1850s, it became trendy to embed Stanhopes in everyday items like pocket watches or thimbles, often sold as holiday souvenirs with pictures of popular tourist scenes.
But humans be humans and it didn't take long for someone to figure out this was also a great way of hiding porn. I'm not entirely sure why golden pig charms became a particular thing, except that pigs are particularly associated with male lust. (Hence why chauvinist men are called 'pigs'. See also: the weirdly seductive Miss Piggy.)
The first pig charm that I've pictured is actually for sale at St Eloi Vintage. However, be warned that it is coated in lead paint, so if you don't want to risk lead poisoning you may be better off getting your porn from the old-fashioned internet rather than the butthole of a tiny gold pig
#18 Terracotta Vase In The Shape Of A Lobster Claw, Made In Greece Around 450 To 400 Bc
According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these lobster claws were most likely novelty cups used at symposia (drinking parties) in Ancient Greece.
Unfortunately, the museum is not interested in expanding their novelty cup collection by acquiring the gently used Looney Tunes mugs I got at KFC in the early 1990s, even though they are also excellent for serving expensive wine.
#19 An Antique Bear Automaton Whose Fur Was Destroyed By An Infestation Of Moths
#20 "Dental Plumper" Jaw Prosthetic Worn By Marlon Brando In The Godfather (1972)
This dental plumper was designed by legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, and made by a New York dentist named Henry Dwork. Their first prototype used more comfortable foam latex, but it made Brando's face look too soft and droopy, so he had them remake it in steel and resin.
This jaw prosthetic must have made Brando extremely drooly, much like the bulldogs he sought to resemble.
From the American Museum of Moving Image in Queens, New York